


His Eyes, Her Feet

by geniewithwifi



Series: All At Once [9]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Hospital, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blindness, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Paralysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 04:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4733294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geniewithwifi/pseuds/geniewithwifi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anonymous asked:  Patients recovering from an injury au</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Eyes, Her Feet

**Author's Note:**

> I cried while writing this
> 
> All mistakes are my own.

They put him in a bed by the window. 

Oliver thought that was a cruel thing, placing him near the outside world. Just close enough to feel it, but separate, divided. A clear boundary that wasn’t apparent until it hindered you. 

Just like him. 

He could feel the rays of the sun beating down on him, the warm caress of light. Faintly, the roar of the freeway reached his heightened ears. In his mind eye, he saw them racing by, the cars, speeding to unimaginable time, flowing away down an asphalt river. 

The irony of being next to a window he couldn’t see out of. 

He doesn’t remember much of the accident, his bike colliding with something solid and  _hard._ He can still remember the sound of shattering glass, the sharp pain as tiny shards impended themselves in his skin. His skin still tingled at the road burns, scabbed over on his arms and legs, his jeans eroded through from the rough road. 

The last thing of his memory was of his head hitting a barrier, neck cracking from the sudden stop. 

Everything faded to black. 

For days he sat in that hospital room, next to the mocking window. His only company were nurses, an occasional doctor. No family nor friends graced him with their presence. He couldn’t even remember if he had any. 

One day, things changed. He woke up from the black to the dark, but felt something was off. Being blind did that to you, sharpened all other senses. He held his breath, listening. 

There. Another breath.

Someone was in the room with him. 

“Who’s there?” He called out, waried with another presence. 

What he wasn’t expecting was the response. “Just me. I’m nobody. I mean I’m not nobody, I’m obviously somebody…” The girl trailed off. He grinned in spite of himself. 

That made him falter. He hadn’t smiled since the day he woke up here, how many days ago. 

“Hi. I’m– I’m Oliver.” 

“Felicity.” A pause. “Smoak. Felicity Smoak.”

Oliver mulled that over. Felicity. It had almost a lyrical rhythm to it. Felicity. 

She didn’t say anything else. He sat there, counting her breaths above the noisy machine. It was comforting, her presence, though at first it had thrown him off. He hadn’t been at ease in anyone’s company since he woke up here. 

“What are you in for?” Her voice broke the friendly silence. “I mean, why are you here? It’s not like we’re in prison.”

“It might as well be, for me.” he remarked dryly. She quieted, but it wasn’t the same as before. It was more, darker, heavier. She was upset, he concluded, but he wasn’t sure if it was anger or sadness. 

Putting away his cynicism of his confinement, he answered her question. 

“Motorcycle accident.”

“Oh. I was in a car crash.” 

A nurse came in just then, checking Felicity’s vitals, from what he could tell. 

“All good Miss Smoak. And how are we Mr. Queen.” 

“Peachy.” His game was high today on the sarcasm level. He could just see the annoyed face she was making. 

“Tsk, tsk, Mr. Queen. I’m pretty sure if you behaved, the doctor would release you.”

“Yeah right,” Oliver muttered under his breath. “Let the blind man go home and have him injured on the first day because he can’t see anything.”

“What was that, Mr. Queen?” The nurse must have caught a bit of it. 

“Nothing. Hey, can you tell me how long I’ve been here?” For the first time, he was curious to know the day. 

“About a month, Mr. Queen.” 

With that, the nurse left. 

He heard Felicity roll towards him, with two awkward  _thumps_ accompanying it. Oliver imagined her leaning on her arm, hand against her cheek.

“You’ve been here a month? Funny, so have I apparently. May I ask why you’re still here? From what I can see, nothing is wrong with you.” 

Oliver huffed, slightly stunned at her audacity. “I’m blind,” he confessed quietly. “I can’t see anything.”

“I’m sorry.” He could hear the sorrow in her voice. 

“Nothing to be sorry for. It just is.”

They fell back to their familiar quiet, companionable silence. Not much later, although, he heard Felicity cough quietly before speaking. 

Carefully, almost shyly, she stated “I can’t walk. The accident caused a piece of metal to tear through the disks in my spinal cord. I lost all use of my legs.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, except feeling the empathy for her situation in bucket loads.  They were two broken people, in two similar situations. 

Finally, he could only echo her previous sentiments. “I’m sorry.”

He could hear her sob once, just once, before she was able to silence her tears. Feeling sorry for yourself got you nowhere, but Oliver knew all too well how sometimes, that all you could do. 

They didn’t talk after that. 

* * *

 

Their friendship started out slow, a few bits of conversation here and there. Within two weeks they were talking to each other all the time. 

He knew many things about her. The fact that she binges TV shows on Netflix with a bottle of wine and a bowl of ice-cream. The fact that she danced in the morning after at least one cup of coffee. The fact that her favorite color is purple and her room is decorated in bright colors. 

He had her describe it then. He had her describe everything. 

Oliver fell in love with her voice. The way she would embrace the colors and designs, telling him every detail that wasn’t important. Felicity would talk fast when she was eager about something, or mimic someone when inspiration hit. 

She became his eyes. When he told her this, she asked him to get out of bed. 

Twice a day he would be taken out of his room, walked around the hospital, and sent back. He never ventured beyond his bed without a nurse because it was safe, it was known. The second he stepped out of that carefully defined area, he could get hurt. 

“Trust me.” Felicity’s voice reached him. He did, didn’t he? Trust her? 

Hesitantly, he climbed out of his bed, reaching that unknown boundary. 

“That’s it. Two steps forward.” He listened and acted, albeit very cautionary. 

“Keep coming, keep coming, and stop.”

He felt her bed in front of his thighs, the proximity sending of red alarms in his head, screaming about the danger. But he trusted Felicity.

Suddenly, he felt a warm a palm on his sleeve, tugging him forward. Felicity. He went willingly, because she was his eyes. He was enveloped in her warmth, as much as she could reach. It was in an awkward position, him halfway bent over and her arms wrapped tightly around his torso. But neither of them moved for several minutes. 

Reluctantly, she let go, guiding him with her voice back to his bed.

The next day the same thing happened. They went a little further, having Oliver go around to the other side of the bed. 

They got progressively better, Oliver trusting Felicity implicitly. The day came where Felicity challenged Oliver to pick her up. At first he was against it, stating that he could lose his balance with her in his arms and end up hurting both of them. Felicity simply stated that she trusted him.

Determined to show her that her faith was not misplaced and that she was deserving of his trust, he picked her up, light as a feather, and placed her in her wheel chair. She then directed him outside. 

Felicity described to him the shock on the nurse’s faces as they wheeled by, told him about the pictures on the wall. His  nurse guides had never done that before, just prattling on about unimportant things. 

Felicity, on the other hand, no matter how much she talked, (and she was quite a talker when you got her going), always said something worth hearing. And that’s what Oliver could do; he could listen. 

They were stopped halfway down the hallway by the head nurse. She demanded to know what they were doing. 

“I’m his eyes and he’s my feet.” Felicity simply stated, as though it was the only truth in the whole world. The nurse quit protesting after that. 

It became their thing. Oliver would pick Felicity up, (she always felt like she was made to fit in his arms, like it was her home) and place her in her wheelchair. He would take her to physical therapy, and those became his daily walks. 

They were inseparable by the second month of their incarceration. They were known throughout the hospital as the conjoined patients because they were always next to each other. Felicity joked that they were the prime example of “the blind leading the lame.” 

Oliver didn’t see the humor in it. 

One night, Oliver had a nightmare. He started to remember things before the accident. The nurses all knew who he was but were on strict orders not to tell him, for him to be force to remember on his own. 

He was screaming in his sleep, thrashing about in the sheets that he woke Felicity up. She had crawled out of bed and thrown herself half-hazardly into her wheel chair. She had barely made it. Dragging her IV behind her, she had wheeled herself to his side, waking him up. 

He had shivered and recoiled into himself, desperate to keep himself from flying apart. Felicity had climbed into the bed with him, wrapping herself around him. The nurse found them in the morning. From then on, one of them always found their way to the other's bed during the night. 

* * *

 

It was the TV that did it. Felicity had turned it on to catch up on the news when they both learned the truth. 

The news station had a report on Billionaire heir, Oliver Queen. He had remembered his past just a few days before. It was a surreal experience to hear the news anchor to be talking about him. The lady continued with how Oliver was still reported to be in the hospital after his tragic motorcycle accident. 

They went on to remind viewers of the accident. Of how Oliver had run a red light and had hit a car, causing the mini cooper to spin out and crash into the stoplight pole. 

One sentence shattered his heart.

“That’s my car.”  He could hear her start to cry. His own world fractured, spider webbing.  He had done this to Felicity. It was his fault that she was in here. His fault that she would never walk again. If he hadn’t had run that red light, neither of them would have been broken beyond repair. 

He yearned to go to her, to slide in behind her and encase her small body in his own, to give as much comfort as he could. Normally, he would do this when Physical Therapy became too hard. 

But tonight, Felicity wouldn’t receive comfort from him. Not when he was the one responsible for her pain. 

It was the first night in a long while they stayed in separate beds.

 The next morning when he awoke it felt like the first morning she had arrived. Something was off in the air. It took him a second to realize: Felicity wasn’t there. 

The nurses informed him that she was released in the early morning. Felicity kept them all quiet, determined not to wake him. 

His heart truly broke then. Because he loved her and she hated him. 

The worse part was he didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. 

The days blurred together after that, a never ending parade of blackness. His nurse forgot to come get him for his walks, since they were out of the habit. 

He told himself that he had only lost his eyes. In reality he had lost so much more. 

Delving into the darkness provided him, he became moody and irritable, sarcastic barbs always on the tip of his tongue. Felicity was his light, his connection to the outside world.

It felt like losing his sight all over again. 

In the middle of his spiral, what he figured to be about a week later, he heard her voice. Oliver must have finally driven himself mad to hear it. Felicity would never come back for him.

Not until he felt her warm, tiny palms on his face did he believe it.

“Felicity.” She was really here. Tangible, complete. His Felicity. She hugged his head as Oliver buried his face in her abdomen, He basked in her presence as long as she would let him. 

Eventually, she drew away, her right hand tracing down his head, down his cheek to his shoulder and all the way to his hand, where their fingers intertwined, his larger one dwarfing hers. 

“Come on, Oliver. You’re getting out of here.”

She tugged him up, him finding his familiar place at the back of her wheelchair. It was only then that he realized another person was in the room. 

Felicity knew immediately his question just by the sharp intake of his breath. 

“Oliver, this is John Diggle. He’s my neighbor and has been taking care of me for the last week. “That explained the other person, but not why he was leaving, after two months of no outside contact.

“But, where...?” 

“Turn right Oliver. You’re coming with us. Since the doctors released me, I’ve been thinking this over. We did just fine the two of us. They only let me go because I had Dig to watch me but he can’t be there all the time.”

“Felicity, in case it escaped your memory, I can’t see. Therefore I can’t  _watch_ you.” 

“I know I know, left here. But we took care of ourselves together without much help. It didn’t take much convincing--stop-- the doctors for them to see it my way and let you go. “

“Does this mean you don’t hate me anymore?” He couldn’t help but ask, worry clogging his throat. 

“Oh Oliver.” She reached behind her and took a hold of his wrist, bringing him around to where she could see him. Oliver felt her hand upon his cheek. “I could never hate you.” 

“Why then, did you leave...without saying...” he couldn’t finish.

“Because I couldn’t, Oliver. I was crying that night not because of the accident, I knew all about it the first time I met you, but because I knew Dig was coming the next day and I couldn’t, I just couldn’t tell you goodbye. I--” She abruptly cut off. 

“We’re good as a team, right Oliver?” He could hear the forced lightness in her tone. 

“Of course. I’m your feet and you’re my seek.” She laughed at that, something real.  

Acting on impulse and the fact that he had wanted to do this for a very long time, he felt his way up to her head, each cheek in the center of his palms, the frames of her glasses, biting gently into his skin. Slowly, he leaned forward, determined to get it right the first time.

Gently, he connected his lips with hers, tasting her sweet aura. She kissed him back almost forcefully, overwhelming him until he caught up. He could feel it thrumming under her skin, the same butterflies in his stomached mixed with a sense of calmness, of rightness. He lost himself in her, in the light for the first time rather than the dark. 

She was his one, his only. 

They were both broken, but in each other found wholeness. They fixed each other slowly, equally, as partners. 

This kiss proved it. 

They drew away at the same time, gasping for breath. 

“Wow,” she smiled. 

“I love you.” he breathed instead. Her smile just grew bigger with wonderment. 

“I love you too.”   

* * *

 

Their first time was surprisingly normal, for them. He explored her all over, from her toes to her ears. She couldn’t feel him below her naval, but that was alright.

When he entered her, with as much love as he could convey, slowly, carefully, listening to her every intake of breath, his love for her increased. When she rocked against him, clenching around him, his love for her expanded. And when they came, him pulsing within her, her walls slick and tight, his love for her exploded. She was his everything and he could not imagine a day without her.

He asked her to marry him three months later, on a walk in the park, next to the duck pond. 

She said yes. 

Having children was more difficult. It took them three years before their first one was born. Two more followed after that. 

Their kids didn’t understand why Mommy couldn’t walk and Daddy couldn’t see. The living room was a minefield of toys that neither parent could navigate,--alone. But together, they cleaned up the tiny bombs with only one or two legos stepped on.

When Felicity’s eyesight started failing her, they worked through it.

When Oliver could hardly walk, they worked through it. 

But they always did it the only way they knew how.

Together.

 


End file.
